Web Analytics Management

Metrics for Smart Content Management - Metric #1 - Task Completion Effectiveness (TCE)

Management of content proliferation is important of course, but in evaluating content effectiveness it is also important to consider the goals of the site. All too often we hear that “reading content” is a site goal. While that may be true if you’re selling advertising, it is generally not true for content rich sites. (For more on this, you’ll want to read next week’s post on Mission Critical Content)The purpose of content is to drive an action or a task, such as a purchase, event registration, donation, newsletter sign up, lead generation form completion, using a selection wizard and so on.

Measuring Task Completion gives you an initial sense on whether the web site is effective in getting visitors to complete the tasks on your site that are associated with business goals. Once you establish Task Completion Effectiveness, you can use this as a benchmark to determine whether you content management actions are working. The goal: raise the site’s Task Completion Effectiveness percentage.

Task Completion Effectiveness (TCE): Measures completion of site tasks associated with your goals and mission

Calculation: Expressed as a percentage based on the total number of task-completion page views divided by total number of site page views. A higher percentage indicates more successful task completion.

Calculation Notes: The completion page for each task will need to be identified, such as a “thank you” page or a submission confirmation.

Example: During the month, there were 500,000 total page views. Of this total number, there were 10,000 task-completion page views. This equals a task-completion effectiveness of 2%.

In the chart below, you’ll notice that we’re using “visits” and not “page views” as a baseline metric. Why? This report was done in Google Analytics. GA bases its metrics on visits and can not correlate events to page views. While we could have created filters to obtain the page view data, we opted to go with what GA does best. Using visits as an alternative still provides a reliable measure of task completion effectiveness. If we had done this in SiteCatalyst, we would have been able to correlate the events to page views.

 

 

In this example, the TCE has gone down slightly over a 3 month trend. Next steps should include reviewing the page view totals of the task confirmation pages to see which ones are experiencing declines, and then determining what factors are influencing the drop. Is it because there has been more content added to the site, thereby “diluting” the completion page views? Less marketing and acquisition driving towards task completion? Or, perhaps tasks are seasonally driven? Like any good high level “health” report, the TCE will drive additional questions that require you to do some analysis and investigation.

As I mentioned in my first post, this metric becomes even more effective through segmentation of audiences by geolocation, subdomain, visit frequency, and acquisition source.

Upcoming Events: Planning Your Migration to SiteCatalyst 15 and Profiles in Analytics in Washington DC

I’m just getting back from a nice end of the summer vacation spent in the woods of northern Pennsylvania. No electronics, clear night skies and great post-Irene weather. A really nice way to re-charge for what is going to be a busy first quarter at Semphonic.

Of course there’s XChange coming up in San Diego from Sept 12-15. Like last year, this is going to be a sold out gathering. I’ll be teaching two ThinkTank sessions on 9/12: Managing a Digital Analytics Program and Beyond Visits and Page Views…How to Develop Actionable, Web Metrics, Reports and Analysis. Look forward to seeing you there.

Right before XChange, we’re going to be offering a free webinar on migrating to SiteCatalyst 15. Join me, Paul Legutko and Chris Meares this coming Thursday, September 8^th at 1pm EST/10amPST as we take a look at what’s new, what’s missing, and what to prepare for during your transition. As Adobe starts to pick up the pace on migrations, make sure that you know what to expect.

Once you register, you’ll receive your free copy of our new SiteCatalyst 15 Transition Guide. Don’t forget to submit any questions that you have when you register. This way we’ll make sure that your questions get top priority.  To register now, just go to: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/938012200

And finally, on October 4^th, we’re kicking off our Profile in Web Analytics series in Washington DC with Nina Mishkin of American Express. Nina will be providing some great case histories, tips and techniques for how she measures success for one of AMEX’s most heavily trafficked global web sites.

This will be the first in an ongoing quarterly series that we’re putting on with the Web Managers Roundtable.  Comcast and The Economist will be first up in 2012. If you’re in the Washington DC area and you want to get inspiring and practical advice from folks who are doing great analytics work, you’ll want to check these out. More details to come.  

To register for the October event, go to: http://bit.ly/n9tsM4.  Seating is limited so sign up soon to reserve your spot.

I hope you’ll be able to join us for these events as you get back into the post-summer swing of things.